A survivor of an unprovoked stabbing spree that left five men wounded at Manhattan’s Penn Station recalled how a routine work trip to the city turned into a harrowing brush with death in an interview with the Daily News.
Howell, NJ resident Steven Hadgkiss, 52, said he was heading to work at Bloomberg and had just stepped off a train into the boarding area for NJ Transit at the station around 7 p.m. Sunday, when the suspect attacked him out of nowhere.
“This crazy dude was running down the stairs,” said Hadgkiss. “You could see in his eyes that he was a total mess.”
“I turn my head a little bit and that’s when I felt it. It felt like a punch to the neck.”
Not realizing he had been stabbed, Hadgkiss was riding an escalator up to the street when he spotted a fellow commuter running towards him.
“He started coming down the escalator at me and was like ‘Dude, your neck is bleeding. Your neck is bleeding all over. Grab your neck,’” said Hadgkiss. “I looked down and saw my shirt was covered in blood.”
Moments later, Hadgkiss was emerging onto the street clutching a slash wound on his neck and desperate for help.
“It was crazy. There were people pouring out of Penn Station,” Hadgkiss, a Howell, NJ resident, told The News. “My shirt was covered in blood. I remember thinking, I have to get the street before I pass out.”
Hadgkiss hoped to flag down a police officer outside the station, but instead found a hot dog cart vendor who offered him a stack of napkins. The New Jersey resident was pressing the napkins to his neck when he looked around and saw, to his horror, that he was not the only victim.
“People were pouring out of Penn Station. I saw two or three other people who had blood coming down their heads One guy was bleeding from his face,” said Hadgkiss. “I called 911 and I told them, ‘I think you have a mass casualty incident.’”
All 5 victims were rushed by medics to Bellevue Hospital with wounds described as non life-threatening. One victim is in serious condition while the others suffered moderate or minor wounds. Hadgkiss needed six stitches to close his wound.
“The other people definitely looked worse than me,” he said. “They put another gentleman in the ambulance across from me. He was just covered in blood. He was talking incoherently. I couldn’t understand what he was saying.”
Amtrak police officers arrested the suspect moments after he attacked his fifth victim. Cops recovered the knife the attacker used.
The suspect is apparently homeless and has prior arrests in New Jersey for assault and drugs, sources said. He suffers from mental illness and was high on drugs at the of the attack, cops said.
“When you go to the city a little bit, you see some people with mental health issues, you just keep walking and get out of the way. I just wanted to get where I wanted to go,” said Hadgkiss. “From what I’ve heard, it wasn’t a black thing, it wasn’t a white thing, a male thing or a female thing, it was anybody this dude felt like attacking.”
The suspect was also taken to Bellevue Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. Charges against him are pending.